Okaloosa and Walton County Business Journal 2021

SPECIAL REPORT

2021 Okaloosa and Walton County Business Journal AN 850 BUSINESS MAGAZINE SPECIAL REPORT

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT | WALTON WORKS | PETER BOS PHOTOS BY JOHN HARRINGTON (BOS) AND COURTESY OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE AND BARGE DESIGN (SHOAL RIVER RANCH)

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Setting the Stage for Progress Okaloosa County enhances its appeal to prospects

BY SAMUEL HOWARD

A

s it did for the rest of the country’s economy, the coronavirus pandemic added a heavy dose of volatility to commerce in Okaloosa County.

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But Nathan Sparks, executive director of One Okaloosa EDC — known until recently as the Economic Development Council of Okaloosa County — sees reasons for optimism

even while acknowledging recent challenging times.

Take Shoal River Ranch, Okaloosa’s so-called “gigasite,” a sprawling stretch of undeveloped land that Sparks said could someday host businesses requiring thousands of employees.

For now, the ı0,500-acre site awaits its first tenant. Sparks said the pandemic has made the search for prospective employers difficult. Many businesses, he has noticed, aren’t in an expansion mode and are instead focused on building their financial resources. He called it a “very challenging landscape” for doing business.

RENDERING COURTESY OF BARGE DESIGN (SHOAL RIVER RANCH) AND PHOTO COURTESY OF ONE OKALOOSA ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (SPARKS)

Conceptual drawing illustrates the potential at the massive Shoal River Ranch “gigasite” and its proximity to rail and highway transportation arteries.

Between the land acquisition and the final piece of infrastructure, it’s been a very good stage-setting year for Shoal River Ranch.”

—Nathan Sparks, executive director of One Okaloosa EDC

But Sparks points to the recovering economy and slowing pandemic as signs that good news is in the pipeline.

“So long as we stay the course and continue to execute the plan we envisioned three years ago, we will have the success that we intend to have,” he said.

Steps prescribed by that plan are being accomplished.

The county’s extension of water lines four miles and sewer lines three miles to Shoal River Ranch was expected to wrap up this spring, Sparks said. And in November, Okaloosa County commissioners voted to buy 588 acres there for about $2.2 million. The Holland M. Ware Charitable Foundation owns most of the land at

the ranch, located between Crestview and Mossy Head immediately south of the Florida Gulf & Atlantic Railroad and U.S. Highway 90.

The economic development council is taking another step, developing conceptual plans to possibly divide an 88-acre parcel near U.S. 90 that was part of the county’s purchase.

Sparks envisions that a business could build a 200,000-square-foot facility on one of those smaller lots and create several hundred jobs.

The other 500 acres purchased by the county border an additional ı65 acres that Okaloosa County also owns, Sparks said.

“That’s where you could do a million-squarefoot-facility — or more — and employ literally thousands of people,” Sparks said.

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Even with the market pinch, Sparks said prospective employers are showing interest, and the project remains on track.

“Between the land acquisition and the final piece of infrastructure, it’s been

a very good stage-setting year for Shoal River Ranch,” he said.

There were highs and lows elsewhere in Okaloosa County due to the pandemic.

The county’s unemployment rate spiked at ı3.3 percent in April 2020 but

plummeted to 4.ı percent by December.

That’s still nearly ı.5 points greater than it was pre-pandemic, but nevertheless is one of the lowest county jobless rates in the state. In 2020, the local economy suffered during the important spring break season when Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended vacation rental operations via executive order but bounced back for a strong showing during the summer, Sparks said.

With cross-country flights out of the question for many families, Sparks suspects that driving to Okaloosa’s beaches became an attractive Plan B for some vacationers.

“I think the fact that our community tends to be largely a drive-to destination, that worked to our favor,” Sparks said.

Education is a priority

The Triumph Gulf Coast Board awarded Northwest Florida State College a $7 million grant in 2020 to develop an Aviation Center of Excellence (above) at Bob Sikes Airport near Crestview. The college anticipates awarding aerospace industry certificates to more than 300 students in the next 10 years.

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Despite the ailing economy, Okaloosa County voters approved a half-cent sales tax by a ı2-percentage point margin in November.

Tax proceeds will fund the modernization of the county’s public

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ONE OKALOOSA ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL (RENDERING, MAP)

SPEC I A L R EPORT

school facilities, including expected improvements to technology and the school bus fleet.

Sparks called the initiative “critically important,” one that the economic development council backed. He commended the district’s academic performance but said its facilities are “antiquated” and “decrepit in some cases” with leaky roofs and failing HVAC units.

“When we have prospective employers and businesses visit our area and see schools that were built in the, you know, ’50s, ’60s, what have you, that really haven’t been updated in decades, it’s not the right signal we need to be sending regarding our priorities,” Sparks said.

There’s more positive momentum in education, Sparks said. Triumph Gulf Coast, the nonprofit dispensing Deepwater Horizon oil spill damages paid by BP, awarded a $7 million grant last summer to Northwest Florida State College for its Aviation Center of Excellence. Construction on the center

at Bob Sikes Airport near Crestview was nearly complete as of early spring.

With support from the HSU Educational Foundation, the $ı4.4 million facility will offer training in the aerospace industry.

NWFSC hopes to serve at least 307 students over ı0 years, including those earning certificates in airframe and powerplant mechanics as well as professional piloting. The airframe and powerplant mechanics certificates, in particular, should appeal to separating and retiring service members from Okaloosa’s Eglin Air Force Base, Sparks said, because the military doesn’t require that qualification.

“That’s a critical thing for our region’s aerospace sector,” Sparks said.

Pandemic pivot As Americans donned masks and added “PPE” to their vocabularies, one entrepreneur with local ties saw an opening in the personal protective equipment market. Bob Sires, until recently the owner of American Elite

Molding near Crestview, worked with One Okaloosa EDC to open U.S. Meltblown — a business now working literally around the clock to manufacture meltblown polypropylene filter material. The material is a component in medical gowns and masks, including the N95 respirators that many consider the gold standard of PPE. When U.S. companies began churning out masks during the pandemic, Sparks said, they did so with internationally sourced materials. Sires has said that resulted in shortages and delays.

“This is a play to truly domesticate that entire supply chain,” Sparks said.

Okaloosa County and Fort Walton Beach granted the PPE project ad valorem tax exemptions of $ı5,673 and $23,073, respectively. U.S. Meltblown expects to create 50 new jobs. The company leases ı4,000 square feet at the Fort Walton Beach Commerce and Technology Park, where U.S. Meltblown plans to make $3 million in tenant improvements.

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Walton Works Innovative partnership provides for student education, inmate rehabilitation

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

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W

ith dollars awarded by the Triumph Gulf Coast Board, the state’s disburser of damages paid by BP owing to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office is turning its DeFuniak Springs “campus” into a center of not just law enforcement, but also education and rehabilitation.

In that effort, the Sheriff’s Office is partnering with Northwest Florida State College to create what Sheriff Michael Adkinson and NWFSC president Devin Stephenson believe

will be the finest public service academy in the state.

“I don’t need to tell you about the value of competent, capable professional firefighters and paramedics and law enforcement personnel,” Adkinson said. “They literally have lives in their hands.

And they are stewards of the people’s authority, so it’s important that they are not only professional, but tempered in their approach to difficult circumstances.”

Public safety training will be “bifurcated,” Adkinson said, in that classroom sessions will be

PHOTO COURTESY OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE

Dignitaries gathered for ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the Walton Works Training Center of Excellence in DeFuniak Springs. Left to right: NWFSC trustee Rudy Wright; trustee Charlotte Flynt; trustee chair Lori Kelley; NWFSC president Dr. Devin Stephenson; District 2 Walton County Commissioner Danny Glidewell; District 3 Walton County Commissioner Michael Barker; NWFSC Trustee Vice-Chair Shane Abbott; District 1 Walton County Commissioner William “Boots” McCormick; trustee Graham Fountain; trustee Reynolds Henderson.

conducted at NWFSC’s new Walton Works Training Center of Excellence on U.S. 90, while training of a hands-on sort will take place at the sheriff’s campus and will utilize assets including a driving pad and a burn tower.

Those assets were acquired with a Triumph grant award that the college obtained pursuant to the Walton Works Center project.

About the hands-on training, Adkinson is especially excited. He counts it as one of the distinctions that sets the public safety academy in Walton County apart from other such programs.

“You may go to school to become a correctional officer and never set foot in a jail until you graduate,” the sheriff said. “When you receive training at our campus, you will learn what lock and gate mechanisms look like. It’s important for a deputy sheriff to know where things are on an ambulance. The paramedic/EMT/firefighter and the deputy wear different uniforms, but they work together as members of the same team.”

The burn tower, Adkinson explained, will enable trainees to work with live fire, learn how to navigate stairs during a blaze and how to contain flames during an event at a multi-level structure.

The Sheriff’s Office, which runs Walton County Fire & Rescue north of Choctawhatchee Bay and is the largest such department in the county, donated retired fire trucks and ambulances to NWFSC for use in training.

Adkinson said some classes will include both students seeking certifications and established public safety officials satisfying continuing education requirements.

Already, Adkinson is engaged in giving inmates job training in areas including welding, heavy equipment operation and restaurant work. The driving pad means that he will be able to add commercial driver’s license training to the available skills choices. The Sheriff’s Office has gone so far as to acquire a semi for training purposes.

“My philosophy is that when you have a facility like that

you are losing money when it is sitting vacant,” Adkinson said.

“You spend $30 million or $40 million on a school building that closes at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and may be closed for the summer. It is important to give the people a maximum return on their investment. At the driving pad, we’re going to wear the asphalt out by using it both for inmate rehabilitation and public safety training.”

Adkinson is fully aware that there are people who don’t support devoting training dollars and facilities to inmates.

“I think it is the morally right thing to do,” he said. “But if you can’t buy that, I’ll give you an economic argument: It’s expensive to keep people in jail. I joke with the inmates, I’m doing this and you’re not able to vote for me. It’s funny, but the ‘why’ matters.”

About vocational training for inmates, Adkinson said, “This is not the answer, but it is an answer.” He then cited a quotation from Voltaire: “Don’t allow perfect to be the enemy of better.”

“Elected officials are risk averse,” Adkinson said. “They get so afraid of making a mistake that they become paralyzed.”

(I commented to Adkinson that he was the first of many sheriffs in my experience who had ever quoted Voltaire. “I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing,” he said, and then hit me with a Latin phrase, res ipsa loquitur — it speaks for itself.)

The inmate rehab effort, to be sure, has been a learning experience for Adkinson, too.

“With our welding program that NWFSC helped us out with, we discovered that welders need to understand how to use Microsoft office,” Adkinson said. “A lot of welders are independent contractors. You need to be able to set up your email and communicate that way so you can get jobs. That was an exit point that was easily corrected.”

As part of the contract that the Sheriff’s Office entered when it received Triumph funds for inmate rehab, it agreed to a partnership with the Florida State University School of Criminology, which will conduct a long-term efficacy study of the program.

“I’m a trust-and-verify kind of guy,” Adkinson said. “I don’t want to run out and spend a bunch of money on something that doesn’t work. I need to be willing to change and adapt.”

The efficacy study, he said, will be the first of its kind in the country. He said he appreciated the Triumph’s board openness to new ideas and its preparedness to ask tough questions. And he is grateful for his office’s relationship with NWFSC. “NWFSC by moving forward to work with us gives us the opportunity to have a preeminent public safety training center,” Adkinson said. “And, at the end of the day, citizens of Walton and surrounding counties will benefit.”

Dr. Michael Erny, the dean of career education at NWFSC, summarized a joint use agreement between the school and the Sheriff’s Office.

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Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson discussed a joint effort by his office and Northwest Florida State College to create what he believes will be the finest public safety program in the state.

NWFSC president Dr. Devin Stephenson looked on.

The school’s Law Enforcement Program is entitled to use of the firing range and driving pad at the sheriff’s campus. Students attend the college campus facility for classwork and activities and complete firearms training and vehicle operations training at the Walton County Sheriff’s facility.

Students in the Firefighter Program report to the college campus for classroom activities and meet at the burn tower located at the Walton County Sheriff’s Office for hands-on 54

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training activities. The Walton County Sheriff’s department can use the tower for continuing education and skills training for its employees.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held at the Walton Works Training Center of Excellence in February.

In his remarks at the event, NWFSC president Stephenson made a point of noting the success of a student who obtained a welding certification at the school and immediately thereafter went to work making $38 an hour.

It was the applause line of the night.

The center, Stephenson said, “is all about taking people where they are and bringing them to a higher standard of living so that they can comfortably sustain and raise their families.” To do so, the school will closely align center curricula and programs with the needs of area employers.

The project was funded substantially with a $2.7 million Triumph award.

NWFSC, Stephenson said, has been awarded a total of $ı0 million in Triumph funds, more than any other school in the region.

Looking about the Walton Works building, located next to the NWFSC Chautauqua Center, Stephenson said, “This is a dream and a vision that has been brought to reality.” It will succeed, he said, on the strength of partnerships with the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, the Walton County Board of Commissioners, CareerSource and others.

“We can bolster community education by working together,” Stephenson said. “I don’t care who gets the credit just so long as we make a difference.”

As a condition of the Triumph funding award, NWFSC entered into a contract with Triumph Gulf Coast whereby it pledged that students will obtain ı,570 industry-certified credentials within five years. Via established career education programs, some 300 students, including the welding student that Stephenson singled out, already had secured credentials in February.

“We’re on track to meet our goal,” Stephenson said.

The center offers cybersecurity, welding, paramedic, EMT, firefighter, law enforcement, building construction, plumbing, carpentry and HVAC programs.

Lori Kelley, a Freeport native and chair of the college’s board of trustees, saluted the efforts of NWFSC faculty and staff and their “laser focus on career education to meet industry needs.”

The center’s impact, she said, will be “transformational.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF NORTHWEST FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE

SPEC I A L R EPORT

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kaloosa Technical College has been around since 1975 under many different names and missions. Today, Okaloosa Technical College is proud to serve the citizens of Okaloosa County by offering career and technical education to positively impact the workforce of Okaloosa County and the state of Florida. Since Gov. Ron DeSantis shared his goal of making Florida No. 1 in the nation in technical education by 2030, Okaloosa Technical College has stepped up to board that train. Surrounded by military, defense contractors and businesses that thrive in Northwest Florida because of technical training and education, Okaloosa Technical College looks to attract those who want to truly make a difference in their communities and their careers.

OKALOOSA TECHNICAL COLLEGE

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Offering courses in practical nursing, technology support services, cybersecurity, welding, automotive technology, air conditioning, heating and ventilation (HVAC), electrician, solar photovoltaic, marine engine technology, cosmetology, professional culinary arts, carpentry, and building trades and construction technology, Okaloosa Technical College is hands-on, face-to-face and critical in building and maintaining an essential workforce.

Okaloosa Technical College is open to offering programs geared toward specific industries. They are always looking for ways to aid an industry in helping its own workforce. Partnering with OTC, an industry can boost employee morale and skills.

Okaloosa Technical College has a place for every student, whether serving

the area’s veteran population with new transition options and extended education, or presenting dual-enrolled high school students with better opportunities as they walk across the graduation stage.

“I get excited about the possibilities at OTC. With the state pushing us and our district supporting us, I know that we can have a tremendous impact in Okaloosa County,” said OTC Director Kelly Hayes.

“People tell us all the time that they didn’t even know we are here, so we want you all to know — we are here, and we want you to share the word that we are here.

Whether you are looking to ‘upskill or reskill,’ or whether this is your first step into any career area, we are a smart choice.

OTC offers an individualized, studentcentered atmosphere where your story will be heard and the administration knows who you are.”

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Hot Properties Growth along Emerald Coast has exceeded developer’s vision

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

T

he genius of the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort, as a place to live or to visit, is its completeness. There is so much by way of recreational activity, eateries, shopping and other conveniences on or in close proximity to the property that a guest may feel little need to depart the resort in the course of a stay.

That concept is no less appealing than it was when Peter Bos undertook the creation of Sandestin in ı979. To the contrary, it is surely even more desirable given the intensity and the density of visitation and development and the resulting traffic congestion along the Emerald Coast today.

The region can feel good about some of the reasons for its popularity.

“Our area of Florida in particular has gotten a lot of good publicity because it is generally a friendly area,” Bos said.

“It’s a God-fearing, churchgoing and welcoming place versus other parts of the country.”

COVID-ı9 notwithstanding, Bos’ opinions about the region’s growth potential and anticipated trajectory have not changed.

“I have been working here since ı972 and I anticipated the area’s growth, but I will tell you that it has accelerated at an amazing rate, outstripping the available labor resource,” Bos said.

“The cost of supplies is going up everywhere, but here labor, especially, is in extremely short supply. The results of that include price increases and long lines. The labor supply may catch up, but right now we are experiencing extremely rapid growth.”

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More working people would move to the Emerald Coast, Bos said, but there are few affordable places for them to live.

Bos, who made time for an interview while driving to his next appointment, took note of the license plate in front of him in traffic.

“I’m looking at a Massachusetts car,” he said. “A lot of people who have never been here before are literally driving the coast of Florida looking for a place to live. If they are interested in the northern Gulf coast, they may start in Pensacola and head east to Panama City or beyond.”

Bos resides in Destin and is satisfied that, for him, there could be no better place to be. But he recognizes that it has “several unique problems” along with its spectacular natural assets, the Gulf of Mexico chief among them.

“It’s an isthmus, a very narrow one between the Choctawhatchee Bay and the Gulf,” Bos said. “Most communities can grow with a series of parallel roads.

We can’t. We have one road — Highway 98. The highway has been improved and it is under construction, but traffic over the bridge in Fort Walton reached capacity in ı986 and it is basically carrying twice what it should be carrying. And, so, we are facing massive traffic jams.”

Development has accelerated, too, in the interior of the Florida Panhandle.

“Crestview is the second-fastestgrowing city in the state, and it is growing despite the fact that to get there, people have to fight their way through an hourglass of an exchange

with I-ı0,” Bos said. “Every morning, it takes an hour-plus just to get through that intersection.”

State Road 85 is the only highway running north from the coast to Crestview.

“That’s because the entire area south of Crestview is Eglin Air Force Base, and the reservation cannot be chopped up into pieces with roads because that would destroy their mission,” Bos noted. “Eglin caused the interstate to be located way far north from the coast and limits possibilities for north-south connectors.”

Photography by JOHN HARRINGTON

Destin businessman Peter Bos’ varied interests include boat sales and boat storage facility development and operations.

But, said Bos, Crestview nonetheless serves as a bedroom community with relatively affordable housing. And it is located in a portion of Okaloosa County that is home to 95% of the remaining developable — and not previously developed — land in the county.

Once northern Okaloosa County is more fully made ready, Bos said, he expects that it will become home to employers offering high-tech, highwage jobs in fields including aircraft repair and maintenance, even auto manufacturing.

“Everybody loves to live here, and

there is a huge pool of highly trained military personnel who are retiring and want to stay here or to move here and start their second careers,” Bos said.

“But right now, the county is trapped until it can arrive at another northsouth road over or under I-ı0.”

Circumstances in Walton County are markedly different.

“It is not bifurcated by an Air Force base,” Bos said. “They have four-laned U.S. Highway 33ı and they receive a lot of attention because, 40 years ago, they switched to limited-height development and a New Urbanism

concept,” which characterizes South Walton county, an area known more familiarly as “30A.” Bos is amused and slightly amazed that one of the toniest communities in North Florida is named after a county road.

He is substantially amazed that prices in South Walton have reached $4,000 a square foot for homes, many of them second homes, on or near the Gulf beach.

“It’s staggering,” Bos said of home prices. “We have seen a 35% price increase in the last ı2 months.”

As an aside, he noted that lots of those 850 Business Magazine

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second homes are becoming primary residences as more people are coming to have the option of working remotely and living anywhere in the country.

“We are going to become far less seasonal, far more year-round and that is good for business,” Bos said. “We used to have two, three months a year when we lost money. It’s hard to build a community when people have to give up their jobs for multiple months a year.”

The property tax revenue associated with the real estate boom is enabling Walton County to stay ahead of the need for schools and public services.

“But what they don’t have is enough roads,” Bos said. “They have no mass transit, no delivery system to the beach. You are limited to your own two feet or a bicycle and a basket. Still, it has a national reputation, and it is continuing to move.”

So, where does the Emerald Coast go from here?

“We’re going to have more traffic jams,” Bos said with certainty. “That’s unavoidable.” For a place like wellappointed Sandestin that goes from bay to beach, that won’t necessarily be a problem, but “properties that have no amenities of their own and you have to get in your car to do everything, that is going to be frustrating for people.”

As a result, Bos predicts, smaller properties will be consolidated and there will be more “fully contained” resorts, “and they will fare best over the long haul.”

Eggs in various baskets “We’re in the hotel business, the shopping center business, marinas and boating,” Bos ran down an incomplete list of his enterprises that also includes consulting, homebuilding and senior living. “Boating and marinas are probably the two best industries you can be in. And RVs, they are doing well.”

Bos is up to 79 boat dealerships in ı4 states carrying 72 brands of boats. His Legendary Marine merged with Singleton Marine six years ago to become a billiondollar company, OneWater Marine.

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Peter Bos promotes boating as an activity that brings families closer together. “To look at the water is one thing,” he says, “but to be on the water is better.” At age 74, Bos has a large-scale, mixeduse development on the drawing board.

Building upon the success of the Legendary Marina and dry boat storage in Destin, Bos is underway building four more such facilities in Gulf Shores, Alabama; Stuart, Florida; and two in the Bahamas.

The islands, Bos said, will benefit as more people move to Florida and buy big boats capable of easily making trips there.

“The only place you can be with your grandchildren, your children and your children’s friends and have a chance to get to know them all is in a boat,” Bos said in accounting for the exploding popularity of boating.

“Because nobody can leave. There is nothing more family oriented than boating — and to look at the water is one thing, but to get on the water is much better.”

There is plenty of room aboard Bos’ pride and joy, a ı20-foot North Coast yacht that he keeps docked in Jupiter

so he can run back and forth to the Bahamas easily.

But what of that fully contained resort concept that Bos helped pioneer in the ı970s? Might he take a second run at it?

“I have another destination concept in mind,” Bos said. “It will be a major attraction for the Destin area.”

He will not be content to see the area become a retirement community.

“Look at what happened to Fort Lauderdale. And Clearwater. What keeps our area vibrant is its tourism,” Bos said. “And you have to keep moving forward and upgrading. We are going to bring a new residential environment and tourist attraction that will be very, very well received by everybody.”

Bos is 74 and feeling fine.

“I look my age, but I don’t think I act it,” he said. “I’ve got more going on now than I have had in my entire life. I feel like a whirling dervish.”

Photography by JOHN HARRINGTON

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